Scarcity of the wireless spectrum has led to the development of new techniques for better utilization of the wireless spectrum. Demand for high data rates and better voice quality is resulting in the development of new wireless standard making wireless spectrum limited than ever. In this era of wireless communication, service providers and telecom operators are faced with a dilemma where they need a large sum of the wireless spectrum to meet the ever increasing quality of service requirements of consumers. This has led to the development of spectrum sensing techniques to find the unused spectrum in the
available frequency band.
The results presented in this thesis will help out in developing clear understanding of spectrum sensing techniques. Comparison of different spectrum sensing approaches. The experiments carried out using USRP2 and GNU radio will help the reader to understand the concept of underutilized frequency band and its importance in Cognitive Radios.